Vista first week sales below target

First week sales of Windows Vista (retail) were down almost 60% compared to first week sales of Windows XP in 2001.  The dollar value of sales was down 32% helped by the higher average retail price of Windows Vista. Research carried out including retailers such as Amazon.com, Best Buy, Circuit City, Office Depot, CompUSA and Kmart showed that the average selling price of Vista was £207.13, 66% up on that of Windows XP; this was due to 30% of Vista sales being Windows Vista Ultimate which retails for just under $400.

Steve Blamer CEO of Microsoft admitted that sales forecasts may have been overly aggressive.

While first week retail sales of Windows Vista were down on those of XP, the sale of new PCs was up 67% when compared to the same week of 2006.  The majority of these new PCs will have been sold with Windows Vista pre-installed.  With the high price of a retail copy of Vista, the low cost of new PCs and concerns that Vista may not run smoothly on older machines; many consumers are most likely buying a new system including Windows Vista rather then upgrading their current hardware and operating system.